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Iran official expects trial soon for 3 Americans

Three Americans detained in Iran for almost a year on suspicion of spying will likely go on trial soon if prosecutors
decide there is enough evidence to press charges, Iran's top human
rights official said Friday.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, the secretary-general of Iran's High
Council for Human Rights, said the latest sanctions imposed by the
U.N. Security Council against Iran over its nuclear program should
not affect a possible trial.

"I think it should not be very far from now," Larijani told
reporters in Geneva, adding that authorities were in the final
stages of collecting information and carrying out interrogations.

Sarah Shourd, 31, her boyfriend Shane Bauer, 27, and their
friend Josh Fattal, 27, were arrested in July along the Iran-Iraq
border. Their families say the three were simply hiking in Iraq's
mountainous northern Kurdish region and if they crossed the border,
it was accidental.

Hickey lives in Minnesota, Shourd is from Oakland, California,
and Fattal is from suburban Philadelphia. Iran allowed their
mothers to visit in May, the families' first contact with them
since they were taken into custody, but the mothers returned home
empty-handed.

"Our security people are very anxious to see what was behind
the intrusion of our borders," Larijani said, adding that
possibilities ranged from "they were just hiking and by mistake
they came to that area" or "that they were totally spies."

Larijani said his government-approved human rights body was
pressing for a fair handling of the case and for the three to be
presumed innocent unless proved otherwise.

Iran hikersAP Photo

But he rejected suggestions that the Americans might be swapped
for Iranians held in the United States.

"The exchange is not something that we advocate," Larijani
said. "Our judicial system does not agree with these kinds of
arrangements."

He said six or seven Iranians are being held by the United
States without access to lawyers, diplomats or their families,
among them a nuclear scientist, Shahram Amiri, who he claimed was
kidnapped by the United States while in Saudi Arabia.

U.S. media have reported that Amiri defected to the United
States and is assisting the CIA in efforts to undermine Iran's
nuclear program. Iran was subjected to fresh U.N. sanctions on
Wednesday over its refusal to curtail its nuclear program, which
the West claims is aimed at producing nuclear weapons but which
Tehran says is only for peaceful purposes.

Larijani criticized the latest U.N. sanctions as being led by
the United States and Britain, but said they shouldn't influence
the case of the three Americans.

Shane Bauer and his motherAP Photo/Press TV

"The issue of detainees should be pursued on the humanitarian
level and not be muddled with other issues," he said.

Larijani led his country's delegation to the U.N. Human Rights
Council, which on Thursday debated Iran's rights record. Critics,
including the United States, other western countries and rights
groups, said Iran has failed to fulfill its pledge to improve human
rights after the violent crackdown on opposition activists after
the disputed 2009 presidential elections.

Larijani said Iran was negotiating so that the U.N.'s top human
rights official, Navi Pillay, could visit next year.